Covid and Globalization

This post is inspired, and adds to the Faiola article.

Ever since covid struck, the world has never been the same. Some countries opened up, others remained in lockdown, and some adopted a mixed approach to a certain effectiveness. However, all of them, at some point during this everlasting ordeal, had imposed travel restrictions.

It doesn’t matter how easy virtual communications are, travel will always be the most valued form of relaying and receiving information. I was in China during the first 2 years of covid from 2020 to 2022. And during these times, despite intense restrictions and quarantines, I saw representatives from the UK, Canada, and other parts of the world attending business conferences in person. Although much less common during covid, it shows just how dependent countries have become on each other when it comes to trade and development, even when faced with a surge of nationalism. And this brings up an important topic –

If it weren’t for the ease of travel, covid would not have spread this quick; If countries did not care about what others’ are doing, we wouldn’t need to travel this much. Effectively speaking, travel enhancements, a product of globalization as much as a driving force of it, caused it to slow to a halt. Is it causing itself to de-globalize? Is globalization an inevitable, but also unstable force? These are questions we would usually ask ourselves. But at the same time, without scientists and doctors and the WHO, could it have been worse? That would be a topic for another blog.

Either way, the pandemic has been very effective at cutting down globalization especially in the form of travel. Here is a photo I took while waiting for a flight to hong kong. It was taken in the summer of 2022, in what was usually the busiest airport in my home province.

Even coming back to Canada, the airports felt, wrong. It was almost liminal. Spaces usually filled with people, sound of chatter, footsteps, gone. Dim lights filled empty hallways. A grim reminder of what a globalized pandemic is capable of.